The Crux As I continued my chat with Edward, I realized I had a bit to learn too. While coaching him to interview, I found I was coaching myself to better conduct interviews…

I needed to take Edward back to the place in his story where his eyes lit up, where his passion stirred, where his passion flickered – because I had missed it. I had missed his unique art.

“Your challenge, Edward, is to find the moment you made a decision, took an action, or otherwise changed the direction of the story. Then, identify the unique perspective, approach, or risk you took. Focus 80% of your story here, explaining how and why your uniqueness led you to your conclusion. THAT is your art. That is what you need to tell the interviewer. That is what makes you special. And that seemingly small part is the only part that really matters. THAT is exactly the art every organization needs.”

The challenge as an interviewer is to realize that the greatness of a candidate, his art, is often hidden by the nature of his story. The crux of his story is exactly the part that we tend to gloss over in an interview, because that is the place your candidate neglects to expound.

He tells us the situation, the action, and the result, (thank you Kelley Business School for S.A.R.) but fails to describe why he took the action at hand. He wrongfully assumes any other person would have taken the same action, and thus neglects to realize his own unique talent because he has been conditioned otherwise, see White Collar: The American Middle Classes (or he’s trying to hide his lack of art altogether). Will you recognize it?

Each and every time you simply move on to the next question without asking the “Why?” and discovering the unique perspective of the passionate artist, you neglect the very art of this person – the very art your company desperately needs. THAT unique perspective is what your organization needs. What YOU need.

THAT is what transforms your entire business unit, influences your whole company – encourages growth, creativity, passion, and art. Stop looking to fill open positions with the “right” fit, and instead seek out the unique art of a person that will transform your company. Discover the true art of your candidate by awakening his passion through question and uncover his unique perspective through the crux.

That is your art, and it all starts with identifying and exploiting the ever-elusive crux of the interview.

Last week a member of my team approached me and asked if I would mock-interview him for an internal position for which he had applied. The part of me most passionate about developing people responded immediately, "Sure!"

During the short jaunt across the street to the Border’s Café, it struck me – a mock-interview was not at all what Edward needed to be prepared. He needed tools. Tools to think about the very unique art only he has to share with the world, and tools to bring this art of his to market in an interview.

As we walked across the street and up the stairs, through aisles of books, past the Twilight series, my mind was racing through the myriad of interviews I had conducted over the last 6 years, searching for those moments that truly intrigued me as an interviewer. Those crux moments separate a good candidate from a great candidate.

From years of interviewing candidates for Fortune 100 companies and Most Admired companies, I have learned that the majority of the available workforce has no idea how to talk about themselves. In fact, no idea how to be themselves!

If you're in a management position and have any hiring responsibilities I am sure you have asked yourself the following questions once or twice, "Wait, what was her answer to that question? When did I stop listening?"

Most likely the reason for your wandering mind is not that you indulged too heavily during happy hour the night before, or that you were distracted by the looming quarterly report deadline. Rather, it is the content (or lack-thereof) and delivery on behalf of the candidate. But you encourage it!

All too often the candidate arrives with a resume in-hand (one they hope will speak for them), and will wait for you to ask them questions. That is how nearly every “career counselor” or college career center has coached the newest class to the workforce. It is no wonder so many interviews are incredibly boring. The uniqueness of these individuals has been surrendered to the “right” approach to interviews. And I suspect a part of you thinks “this is just the way it is.”

I say, hogwash!

Yes, you will have to ask questions. And yes, your candidate will need to provide answers. Furthermore, it is the onus of the candidate to keep your attention, to show you the art they will bring to your organization and that unique human element that will make your business unit better.(Thanks to Seth Godin’s work “Linchpin,” for providing the term “art” to describe one’s work)

For me, the interview is not about questions. It is about story.

I want to be engaged with the story of a candidate who has impacted people, customers, peers, superiors, and I want it to evoke some passion and emotion in me. That is how I know a candidate has the “stuff” that will move my company forward. It doesn’t have to be a heart-wrenching tale of how she saved a failing product, it can simply be about a single interaction with a customer who had a question about the power button – but how that customer’s question led to a human connection. When a candidate can tell this story in response to a question – I say, “brilliant!” One step closer to a good fit.

I suspect there are plenty of people who can “do the job” you need done. You’ve settled for them before, and you’re at risk of settling for them again. The pressures of the daily tasks slowly eat away at your willingness to hold out for the best addition to your team. Instead, you are daily more convinced that you just need a candidate to fill the empty shoes, to complete the overdue tasks. If you settle for this, you are settling for a path that will only make you less able to share your art, passion, and uniqueness with others.

And the more you allow this to happen, the more you entrench not only yourself, but your entire business unit, your whole company in practices that stunt growth, limit creativity, and slowly kill the art you try so hard to share with the world. It all starts with YOU. You are the gatekeeper of story, your own story, as well as that of your organization.

All too often we accept the lack of story from candidates we interview. We gloss over it in our haste to fill a position. And every time we do, we contribute to the continuation of our boring vanilla interviews.

Answer for yourself this question:

How did you respond the last time a friend, peer, or direct report asked, “will you help me prepare for an interview?” (Can you even remember the last time you were asked that question?)

Did you blow them off? Did you ask them meaningless “interview questions” that fit the mold we have grown to expect? Or did you engage them in a different way, engaging them to tell a story?

Last week I nearly fell prey to the very same temptation -- to maintain the status quo. Contribute to the death of story. The decline of my own and another's art.

Look here next week for the tale of my fight against the death of story and my battle to keep interviews engaging, interesting, and a more accurate judge of character…